The Inclusion Rider, developed by civil rights attorney Kalpana Kotagal and Pearl Street Film’s head of strategic outreach Fanshen Cox, is an addendum added to a contract that sets forth a process for hiring and casting to expand and diversify the candidate pool, encourage hiring qualified cast and crew who have been traditionally underrepresented in productions, track progress and create accountability.
Let’s do it in a way that leads to meaningful equity and not tokenism. Let’s do it in a way that recognizes the deep pool of talent in the industry. Let’s do it in a way that is systemic, not one-off.
Kalpana Kotagal
Civil rights attorney and inclusion rider co-creator
An inclusion rider is a contract provision that establishes diversity tracking and benchmark accountability measures. Any functional inclusion rider must contain these 4 key components:
A commitment to deepening and diversifying hiring pools
Established hiring benchmarks
Collection, measurement, and analysis of hiring data
Implemented accountability measures to support progress
At the inclusionrider.org site, you can learn more and download templates to build your inclusion rider.
This is a flexible template that should be tailored to particular settings and productions with the involvement of counsel.
